Social business gets failing grade

TORONTO, April 10, 2013 /CNW/ - Most companies are using social media with employees, but fail to satisfy

Summary

Results from the Social Intranet Study (651 organization participants;
conducted by Prescient Digital Media) find that most organizations
(71%) have at least one social media tool available to some or all
employees. The most popular social media tools are instant messaging,
blogs, discussion forums, wikis, and user commenting. However, the
average respondent organization gives their internal social media
efforts a failing grade. Failing grades show a direct correlation to
investment where the average company spends about $10,000 or less on
their internal social media (intranet 2.0)

Details

Most common enterprise social intranet tools
The five most popular social media tools are instant messaging, blogs,
discussion forums, wikis, and user commenting:

76% of organizations have instant messaging.

75% of organizations have blogs.

70% of organizations have discussion forums.

67% of organizations have wikis.

67% of organizations have user commenting.

Cost of social media
Most organizations spend little or nothing on their enterprise social
media tools. Many organizations that implement social media tools spend
less than US$10,000:

47% have spent less than US$10,000.

30% have spent between US$10,000 and US$99,999.

23% have spent US$100,000 or more.

Satisfaction
Executives and employees alike are less than thrilled with their
enterprise social media:

The average rating of internal social media by their host organization
is 4.5 out of 10

Only 22% of organizations rate employees' satisfaction with Intranet 2.0
tools as good or very good.

Only 17% of organizations rate executives' satisfaction with Intranet
2.0 tools as good or very good.

"Most companies are using social software internally, but the results to
date are underwhelming, if not awful." - Toby Ward, study author

"Low satisfaction levels can partly be blamed on the lack of investment:
nearly half of all companies (46%) have spent between nothing and US$
10,000 in implementing their social media. Sometimes you get what you
pay for," Toby Ward, study author

"Heads would most definitely roll if the CRM, ERP or main intranet portal
inspired such a dismal user response. But there's no doubt that social
business is still a relatively new concept for most organizations, and
therefore the jury still deliberates before the guillotine is sharpened
and deployed," Toby Ward, study author